Within the wee hours of Wednesday morning (December 4), Pop Tradition Jeopardy!, hosted by Saturday Night time Stay’s golden boy Colin Jost, arrived, splashed on the above-the-fold entrance web page of Amazon Prime Video. The brand-new, streaming-only addition to the Jeopardy!-verse is right here. Its three-episode premiere meant followers awoke with some binging to do. Right here’s what went down:
Episode 1 was a thriller match with a come-from-behind victory in Last Jeopardy. Episode 2 featured a stunning rating reversal involving an alternate movie competition title of the Paul Rudd comedy Our Fool Brother (sure, it’s that area of interest). Episode 3 was a battle royale of groups of all former Jeopardy! contestants. The reception has been typically optimistic from followers, one Redditor placing it, “Simply watched the primary episode. I’m hooked. What a wild end!”
Jost is a profitable match as host, and the gameplay, that includes groups of three (or 9 gamers without delay) buzzing in individually with just one answering the extraordinarily on-line clues in 30-minute installments, feels just like the nightly present. It’s palatable, slightly looser (see Jost’s NSFW Canadian metropolis of “Regina” quip), prepared for the embrace of Gen-Z.
The manufacturing choices are a distinct story. There are logos in all places you look. It’s busy. There’s no Last Jeopardy monitor, for the reason that hunky podiums didn’t depart room, that means the Last clue is proven on the brand new LED display in a smaller body. There’s additionally a brand new function on the board known as a Triple Play, which entails a three-part reply and an opportunity to steal a-la Household Feud. Experimental Government Producer Michael Davies couldn’t resist a twist (see the hidden Day by day Doubles from Masters, Triple Jeopardy! from Movie star Jeopardy!).
Pop Tradition Jeopardy! begins with 81 groups that get eradicated till there’s one champion and a prize quantity of $300,000, so there will likely be 40 episodes. Jeopardy! followers who need to keep caught up now have 4 video games to look at each Wednesday; three from PCJ, and one from the syndicated nightly present with Ken Jennings.
In January, the Match of Champions, Movie star Jeopardy!, and Pop Tradition Jeopardy! will all be airing airing without delay. These weeks, there will likely be 10 episodes of Jeopardy!. This begs the query: Why wasn’t Pop Tradition Jeopardy! moved to over the summer time to tide followers over throughout reruns? Merely put, it’s quite a lot of Jeopardy!.
Many viewers nonetheless have PTTD (Publish Traumatic Match Dysfunction) from 2023. The WGA strike hurled the enduring quiz present into show-must-go-on mode, and EP Davies’ resolution was months upon months of complicated tournaments, inflicting what followers coined “Match Fatigue.” There’s a extra existential drawback on the clue board: “Jeopardy! fatigue.”
Davies took over as EP in 2021, following the revered Harry Friedman (and somebody in there named Mike Richards) who lifted the five-win cap and doubled clue values, in any other case not altering a lot else throughout his 20-year tenure that modernized the quiz present. Davies’ resume has an asterisks within the type of the supernova Who Desires to Be A Millionaire, its over-saturation in primetime led to fast cancelation. Followers have lengthy grumbled about Davies giving the Millionaire remedy to the Jeopardy! name. What purpose has he given followers not to be?
Listed below are only a few Davies creations: Jeopardy! Masters, Movie star Jeopardy! as a event, an expanded three-tiered ToC, some kind of bar league, the weekly Inside Jeopardy! podcast, a stay tour, and now Pop Tradition Jeopardy!.
Because the outlet BuzzerBlog wrote of their Pop Tradition Jeopardy! evaluate, “Michael Davies is working the Jeopardy! model into the bottom.” They continued, “Michael Davies, that is an intervention—please cease. We don’t want this present. We’d like you to take all this vitality you could have and make the first Jeopardy! present the perfect it may be.”
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Pop Tradition Jeopardy!, Wednesdays, Amazon Prime Video